Gerald Kersh - Prelude To A Certain Midnight

‘There isn’t anything to work out,’ said Turpin, smiling.

It was then that Cigarette, looking hostile, spoke of Dicks, or detectives.

A waiter, observing that her glass was empty, paused with a tray of full glasses. Cigarette took one and put back the glass she had emptied, saying: ‘There’s more in this stuff than meets the eye, comrade.’

Then she gulped about a quarter of a pint of Schiff’s Form ule , and became angry. She strode over to Detective-Inspector Turpin, knocking down a little three-legged table on her way, and cried:

‘How dare you come here? You copper’s nark, you dirty little bogey! What are you doing in the company of decent human beings! You filthy bloodhound, why aren’t.you out? Why aren’t you out hunting; why aren’t you out hunting better men to death, you stinking dirty wolf? You murdered Chicken Eyes Emerald. You murdered him! You dirty coward! You wouldn’t have dared to meet him face to face as man to man — no, no, you had to be mob-handed, you beast, with thousands of coppers behind you, all hunting down one man. You hound! And I suppose you’ve come here to gloat, to show off! You —’

‘— Cigarette, shut up,’ said Asta.

‘I’m sorry. I know I’m your guest,’ said Cigarette. ‘But I won’t shut up! Christ Almighty, instead of hounding better men to death, why don’t these bastards go out and find out who killed that little girl?’

‘All right,’ said Detective-Inspector Turpin, ‘take it easy, just take it easy.’

He took a full glass from a passing waiter, handed it tc Cigarette, and said: ‘Let’s have a drink.’

She drank, and she melted. Looking sideways at Turpin through her eyelashes she said, in a different voice: ‘I’m sorry. I behaved like a perfect pig. You won’t believe me, but ordinarily I have quite good manners. I don’t know what came over me. Will you forgive me? Do, please, say you forgive me.’

‘Nothing to forgive, I’m sure.’

‘Call me Cigarette. Everybody calls me Cigarette. Do please forget what I said. I didn’t mean a word of it.’

‘That’s all right.’

‘Do you know me?’

Turpin knew her; but he said: ‘I can’t say I’ve had the privilege.’

‘I was Chicken’s girl. Does that convey anything to you?’

‘Ah-ha?’

‘He was a rat, you know.’

‘So?’

‘But I loved him. I loved him, Turpin!’

‘It’s all over now,’ said Turpin. ‘Be sociable, eh?’

‘I like you, Turpin. Turpin, tell me all about yourself.’

‘_You’ve_ just told me .’

‘What’s your wife like?’

‘What makes you ask, miss?

‘Do you make love to her often, Turpin?’ asked Cigarette.

‘Why don’t you finish that nice drink?’

‘Oh, Turpin, Turpin, I do think you’re pretty terrific! You know, for a little while I hated you. But now I think you’re pretty damned fine. Do you know what? My father used to hunt silly little foxes. But you, you hunt real live men. My God, Turpin, it takes something to hunt down a man like the Chicken — it does! He was a man! … And you’re a better man …’ said Cigarette, with certain inward explosions that presaged hysterics. ‘You’re a — ha-hup, ha-hup —’

‘You can cut that out,’ said Detective-Inspector Turpin, in an undertone like cracked ice made articulate. ‘I’ve heard it all before. Have another drink and get properly drunk, and go home and sleep; and get up, and get drunk again to-morrow, and go to sleep again. But just for now be quiet. Is that clear?’

‘Yes,’ said Cigarette, quietly crying.

Turpin side-stepped like a boxer and disappeared into the thickening crowd.

‘Turp! … Turp!’ cried Cigarette, in a gulping voice. ‘Stand by me, Turp! Let’s play games, Turp — I’ll hide, and you’ve got to find me —’

A waiter was passing. She exchanged her half-empty glass for a full one. There was a numbness in her cheeks. None of Asta’s guests was quite sober now.

34

Oonagh Scripture was leaning upon Sinclair Wensday, who was caressing her shoulder and exchanging glances with a fat, towheaded girl whom nobody knew. His wife Avril was watching him with her right eye and ogling Alan Shakespeare with her left: from time to time they exchanged a look of quiet hate. Muriel, having recognized the Murderer, had rushed across the room to embrace him; but he was deep in conversation with Thea Olivia now, together with Hemmeridge, Graham Strindberg, and Mothmar Acord. Milton Catt intercepted her: they embraced. Tony Mungo clutched her wrist and kissed it; Geezle bowed. Roget, demonstrating a trick with a tray and three glasses, made a clang and a clash; and then Sir Storrington Thirst made noise and mess scraping up glass and drink with a fire-shovel. Ayesha Babbington had interested herself in the trapezius-muscies of Milton Catt, who at the same time was being palpated by Shocket the Bloodsucker, who was saying: ‘Train! Train! May my mother, God rest her dear soul, rot in hell — may my children, God bless them, be given to Narzy Degenerates — I’ll make you light-heavyweight champion. It’s an offer. May I go blind and paralysed if I die! May my wife and children go deaf and dumb and blind and paralysed! Would I say this if I didn’t mean it?’

There was a silence. ‘Titch!’ cried Shocket, looking wildly about the place. ‘Titch, did I done you harm? If so, when?’

‘Never no harm to me, Bloodsucker.’

‘There you are then, you see?’ said Shocket to Milton Catt. ‘You see? I never did no harm, not to nobody. I tell the man I can make him a light-heavyweight champion already, and he looks at me like I done a murder. Gratitude!’

At the sound of the word Murder, conversation clicked back to the topic that had occupied everybody’s time for the past ten days — Sonia Sabbatani. That crime was still interesting in the locality. The corpse was still fresh. In a few more days they would have talked it stale. Then it would begin to bore them, and they’d drop it and forget it.

‘Still no news of that awful business?’ said Ayesha Babbington. ‘God above, what do we keep the Police for?’

‘Just so. Is it for this sort of thing that we ruin ourselves paying taxes?’ said Sir Storrington.

Hemmeridge, in his sibilant, simpering, effeminate voice said: ‘Of course, there’ll be lots more now, you know.’

‘Good lord, what a horrible thought!’ said Tobit Osbert. He was holding Catchy’s hand. Catchy squeezed his wrist.

‘Why, don’t you see, one murder makes many,’ said Hemmeridge.

‘I’ve heard that said about marriage,’ said Mothmar Acord, with a lowering look, compounded of low cunning and secret scorn. This man seemed always to be on the verge of an outburst of mad rage or contemptuous laughter.

‘Well, it’s pretty much the same sort of thing, don’t you see,’ said Hemmeridge, with a titter. ‘Nonetheless, people go to a wedding and it puts ideas in their heads. They think it would be really rather nice to go and have a wedding themselves and some of them do go and have a wedding themselves. Same with christenings. Girl sees pretty little pink ready-made baby, going goo, goo, and thinks that she would rather like to find a delicious little living doll like that under her own cabbage leaf or in her own doctor’s little black bag — according to what her mother has told her, don’t you see, and up goes the birth-rate. And as I think I was saying, it’s much the same thing with this affair. Man kills little girl. Man gets away with it. Lots of people want to kill little girls only they need a little encouragement.’

‘You’re perfectly right,’ said Schiff. ‘It’s perfectly natural. It’s fundamental. Read Das Buch von Es .’